


To be drunk and in love in New York City

by rhysiana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Dex Reveals Secret Bartending Skills, Dex Visits Nursey in New York, Fluff, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 01:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: This is absolutely the classiest way Nursey has ever gotten trashed, especially at home. They’re lying in the middle of the fancy Persian rug now, heads together, feet stretching in opposite directions, staring at the ceiling. Traffic noise drifts up from the street, the comforting white noise of his childhood. He’s giving serious consideration to falling asleep here.“Bitty doesn’t get us,” Dex says from beside him.





	To be drunk and in love in New York City

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve done that thing again where a bit of a song caught me in the car and made a story. (Originally posted on [Tumblr](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/post/173926852788/to-be-drunk-and-in-love-in-new-york-city).)

> To be young and in love in New York City   
>  To not know who I am but still know that I’m good long as you’re here with me  
>  To be drunk and in love in New York City  
>  Midnight into morning coffee  
>  Burning through the hours talking
> 
> –“I Like Me Better” by Lauv

They’ve been together since they got back from winter break, when they realized they’d spent the whole time texting each other or calling each other or waiting for the next time they could do one or the other, and it wasn’t something they could pass off as being because they were roommates or linemates anymore. Nursey still thought it felt kind of surreal, and he was pretty sure Dex did too, if he was interpreting the kind of wonderingly confused expression he sometimes caught Dex giving him from across the room correctly. And he really thinks he’s gotten pretty good at Dex interpretation at this point.

They haven’t really ever seen each other outside of the Samwell context, though, and it’s not like Nursey thinks that’s an important test or anything, exactly, but it’s a point of weirdness he’s thought about before. There wasn’t really any reason to bring it up during the semester, though, because what would they even do about it? Sure, they’d gone out for a date night in Boston once, but just the two of them kind of still counted as Samwell. Sort of. It made sense in his head, anyway.

Which was why, when his parents had to go to Dubai for a week, he invited Dex down. (Not that he would have gone with them anyway; Dubai in the middle of summer was not his idea of fun. He played a winter sport for a reason.)

It’d been great so far. They slept late and went to museums and did touristy things like identify all the TV shows or movies they’d seen a particular piece of the city in before (and then laugh that it was a good thing Holster wasn’t there to kick their combined asses on sheer amount of trivia knowledge.) It is quite possibly the most fun Nursey has had in the city in the summer since he became adult-ish. Teen-ish. Ever, maybe, although he’d been to some pretty sweet summer day camps as a kid.

They’re in a pool hall now, though, and Dex is frowning at his drink. Glaring, really, and with such disdain he’s failed to notice it’s his turn, and it’s definitely not like him to miss an opportunity to make fun of a missed shot. (It wasn’t that bad. It stayed on the table, at least.)

“What’s with the face, Poindexter?”

“I can’t believe you found a pool hall so hipster they don’t serve beer.”

“But you fit in here so well,” Nursey says with a smirk, gesturing around as if to fold Dex into the larger flannel-wearing population of the room. And he really does look good here, relaxing casually against his cue, sleeves rolled up (as he does entirely too often for Nursey’s peace of mind), hair messier than usual because he’s left it too long between haircuts for once in his life. He looks like he belongs. Here. In this place where Nursey also belongs. That isn’t Samwell. It gives him a stupid little thrill in the pit of his stomach.

“Shut up. I don’t have nearly enough tattoos or piercings.”

“Ah-ah, I think what you mean is you don’t have nearly enough piercings _in_.”

Dex’s ears flush right on cue. It really was one of the best days of Nursey’s life when he’d realized Dex had multiple piercing holes up one ear, and he was pretty sure they hadn’t closed up, either. It’s one of his goals for this week to get Dex to actually show him.

“Besides,” Nursey continues, “it’s not like you’ve got anything against mixed drinks.”

“Not _normally_ ,” Dex shoots back, “but this is legit awful.”

Nursey frowns down at his own drink in confusion. “I thought mine was fine.”

Dex leans over and steals his glass to take a sip, then makes a moue of distaste. “Nope. Jesus, Nurse, I thought you would have more refined taste than this.”

Nursey raises his eyebrows. “This from a guy who drinks tub juice without complaint.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t _pay_ for that. And you know full well the point of tub juice sure as shit isn’t the taste. Look, your parents have a liquor cabinet, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Do they care if you use it?”

“No. ’Specially not now it’s legal.”

“Cool. Let’s go.”

***

Turns out, Dex knows how to bartend. “Why did I not know this about you?”

Dex shrugs. “My parents wouldn’t let me do it until I turned 21, so this is the first summer I could do it officially. I only have to work the lobster boats if they’re shorthanded now,” he says with relish, flexing his hand in a way Nursey is pretty sure he isn’t even aware of.

Nursey had noticed the cuts and scrapes on his hands when they’d first gotten back to Samwell last summer, and he hadn’t really understood then, but he does now. There’s a part of Dex that absolutely does take pride in how long his family has been lobster fishermen, (which, yes, Nursey had probably poked him about a few too many times early in their acquaintance,) but there’s another part, one he admitted to once and only once, that’s scared of what might happen if he seriously damages his hands. Everything he’s ever considered doing to make a living relies on his hands. He’s not really sure who he’d be otherwise.

Watching him deftly and precisely pour Nursey what he is assured is the _correct_ version of what they’d been drinking back in the pool hall, Nursey can understand Dex’s worry. He really does have amazing hands. Nursey might be a little obsessed with them, but he always did have a competency kink. (Who doesn’t? he wonders. And who, meeting Dex, wouldn’t develop one pretty damn quick?)

Dex sets the drink before him, and he obligingly takes a sip. “Damn. Okay, you’re right, that other place was shit.”

Dex smiles smugly. Nursey does _not_ tell him it’s a good look on him.

Instead, he takes his drink and wanders to the bookshelves that surround the wet bar, looking for a book he vaguely recalls flipping through during a particularly boring cocktail party that fell in the midst of some other school break. He finds it stuck in with the books about the history of wine. “Ah-hah! Here it is!”

“What is?”

“Book of obscure cocktail recipes. Wanna see how many you know?”

***

He admits it: He shouldn’t have challenged Dex’s professional pride. Or his nerdery. Because he’d also flipped through a few cocktail-making books in his time, and he knew how to make a _lot_ of them. Like, a lot. And he was enthusiastic about getting to use all the proper glassware for them, since of course Nursey’s parents had a full set, “for proper entertaining.”

This is absolutely the classiest way Nursey has ever gotten trashed, especially at home. They’re lying in the middle of the fancy Persian rug now, heads together, feet stretching in opposite directions, staring at the ceiling. Traffic noise drifts up from the street, the comforting white noise of his childhood. He’s giving serious consideration to falling asleep here.

“Bitty doesn’t get us,” Dex says from beside him.

Nursey rolls his head slightly so he can see Dex’s profile. “’Chyeah. But what way do you specifically mean?”

“Have you looked at his Twitter? Half the time he quotes us, it’s some argument we’re having. And, like, he says it affectionately and shit, but there’s, like,” he waves a hand vaguely in the air, “this undercurrent of shaking his head at us, why haven’t we learned to get along yet, you know.”

Nursey feels his brows furrow. “He does know we’re dating, right? He hasn’t been nearly as much in the Jack Zone this year as he was last year. I mean, I know he was all in a panic about his senior thesis, but he definitely knew we were dating before that.”

“No, he knows. For sure he knows. I know because he was all, ‘Honey, are you sure?’ at me in the kitchen one day.”

If Nursey were less tipsy, he’d probably take offense at that, but he really doesn’t think that’s the point Dex is trying to make. “So why?”

“I think, in his mind, if you don’t agree with your significant other on pretty much everything, you’re fighting.”

“We’re not fighting, we’re bickering. Arguing. That’s different,” Nursey insists, blinking at the reflected streetlight glow on the ceiling in indignation.

“Right?” Dex holds up a fist over his head for Nursey to bump, and he does.

“Shouldn’t he get it, though?” Nursey wonders. “According to Shitty, when he first got to Samwell, he and Jack totally hated each other. Like, totally frosty.”

“Mmmm,” Dex hums in agreement. Or thought. They fall quiet for a few minutes. “I think,” Dex says slowly, “it’s partly that Bitty hates confrontation, so anything like fighting is gonna be bad for him, but also, they’re not really that different. Like, yeah, they misunderstood each other at first, but they got past it and just became all comfortable.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Nursey says.

“’Course not,” Dex agrees.

Nursey sees what he’s saying, though. “Do you think another part of it is that they both spent so long hiding who they were? Like, they both spent so long scared people would figure out who they really were at the worst possible time.”

“Yeah, exactly. And now they can just be themselves.” Dex pauses. “I think that’s what Bitty thought we’d be like. Or at least me. He sort of knows it’s not quite true, but he still thinks of me as another closeted gay boy from a small town, like him. But that’s not what makes us alike at all.”

Nursey smiles at the ceiling. Getting Dex to wax insightful about other people is super rare. At least out loud. “And what is that?”

“We’re both,” there are a lot of flailing hand gestures again, “we both spent too much time with everyone telling us they knew who we were already. Assumptions! Assumptions everywhere. Even when we met.”

“Especially when we met.”

“Yeah! Exactly! And it was so frustrating. It’s always so frustrating. Everyone looks at me and sees ‘straight white guy, probably super uptight, look at him,’ and, yeah, I’m blindingly white, but I’ve never been straight, and I’ve never bothered to hide it, and everyone just assumes anyway, and they don’t stop to think that’s maybe part of the reason I seem so uptight! But you know,” he continues before Nursey can say anything about preaching to the choir and Dex’s future career at the Department of Redundancy Department, “because everyone looks at you and sees…” And it’s probably a measure of how much Dex has grown since they first met that he realizes he is way too white to even finish that sentence and just waves his hands in the air some more.

Which is fine, because Nursey can certainly fill it all in himself. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly, not mad, but kind of wishing it wasn’t true, for both of them.

“So anyway, I think what Bitty doesn’t get is that we _do_ have someone else we can be ourselves around, except what we want is someone we’re comfortable enough with to actually correct when they’re wrong about us for once. Someone we can actually make see us for who we are. ’Cuz you do, now.” Dex shifts against the floor and bumps Nursey’s shoulder, and when Nursey looks over at him, Dex has turned on his side with his head propped on his hand so he can look directly at him. “You see me more than anyone does.”

“Sometimes I think I do, yeah.”

“No,” Dex assures him, “you do.” He rolls all the way over onto his stomach now so he can half-bury his face in his arms. He looks at Nursey sideways, his arms not quite hiding the blush climbing his cheeks. “Do you like what you see?”

Nursey smiles at him, slow and sleepy and sincere. “Yeah, I do.” And it’s true; even the parts about Dex that still drive him nuts are part of a whole that he genuinely likes now, because he wants to have intelligent arguments with this guy forever and he knows he’ll never be bored. Some part of him thinks he should say it, here in this strange no-time of drunken night confessionals and philosophical rambling, but he gets distracted by the way the light on the ceiling is slowly turning pinker and brighter, and he blinks when he realizes it’s the sun coming up.

“Hey,” he says, and nudges Dex’s elbow. “Wanna make some coffee?”

“Yeah.”

It’s fine. He can tell Dex later. They’ve got time.


End file.
